Thus far, the deterrent seemed to have worked. There were a few men gathered outside the laundry, shouting and making catcalls, but no sign of an attack. Possibly because several policemen were there also, watching them. The chief of police had proved to be most cooperative.
Otherwise, a contingent of Beasleys. The grandfather. Two cousins of the child's father. Everett and, um, Buster. Both with their wives. Everett's wife looked somewhat apprehensive. Buster's wife was very small for an up-timer, but did not look apprehensive at all. Denise, the daughter of this Buster. He had seen her before, at the Christmas Eve play. Accompanied by Gerry Stone, the young candidate for the ministry? She had been with him on Christmas Eve, also. What could the connection between them be? He would have to ask Jonas.
Another girl, the foundling child, Wilhelmina Hugelmair. Minnie, as they called her. Her adoptive father, Benny Pierce. The adoptive father's niece, who cared for the old man.
He would have to remember-he had a request on his desk to write to Dieskau and obtain all the information available concerning the circumstances under which she had been found abandoned. She told him that the "birthday" she had given the school, the only one she had, was neither her date of birth nor her date of baptism. It was the date on which she had been found.
She could not provide even the date of her baptism. The pastor at Dieskau, realizing that she was already several months old, had not been willing to risk the possibility of rebaptism, even conditional, since she would almost certainly have been baptized somewhere else, shortly after birth. Anabaptism was a grave sin, Pastor Kastenmayer acknowledged.
There would certainly be an entry about it all in the church books there, and there should be one in the city council records as well when she was bound out the first time.
Gerry Stone's brother Ron, with a young woman whom the pastor did not recognize. Otherwise, Jonas Justinus Muselius, Jonas' fiancee Ronella Koch, his own wife Salome and his daughter Maria Blandina.
He would not be surprised if the Beasley contingent was also armed. He had not been informed in regard to this, but he would not be surprised.
He began the liturgy. The father wished to name the child Viana, in honor of his mother. Lutheranism had no requirement for biblical names or saints' names, although they were customary. The infant would be Viana.
After the baptism, the party went to a tavern called the City Hall Cafe for food. Some of the police followed them. Two remained behind, out of sight. To "keep an eye out," the chief had said, in case anyone attempted to vandalize the laundry. This resulted in three arrests.
According to Jonas, the connection between Gerry Stone and Denise Beasley was "friend."
"Friend?" Pastor Kastenmayer cocked his head, thinking that many young men were diverted away from their academic aspirations by inappropriate… friendships.
Jonas nodded. "Gerry says that the last thing in the world that Denise needs is one more guy hitting on her. That she gets too much of that already."
Jonas paused. "Ronella confirms this. She has heard it from the other teachers, now that she is at the middle school. Denise has very few friends. Only Minnie Hugelmair, really, and she has been in Grantville for less than two years. Gerry and Denise have known one another since they were small children."
"Very well," Kastenmayer said. "He is her friend."
"He is also," Jonas said, "or had the reputation of being, before his experiences in Italy, a very pugnacious young man. The up-timers believe that this is a quality often associated with red hair."
"I have not received any complaints about his behavior from the rector of the Latin School in Rudolstadt."
Nobody ever accepted public responsibility for the series of stink bombs that forced the 250 Club to close for business the evening after the Beasley baptism. The police located no clues whatsoever. Pastor Kastenmayer heard subsequently that most Grantvillers assumed that they were retribution for the effort to vandalize the laundry.
Opinion was divided on the merits of this action. But it did not seem to be divided very much concerning the most likely culprit.
Pastor Kastenmayer tried to reconcile in his mind the juxtaposition of "Gerry Stone, devout student," and "Gerry Stone, chemical saboteur." It was not easy.
PART EIGHT
March 1635
To wage by force of guile eternal war,
Irreconcilable, to our grand foe
Chapter 44
Haarlem, Netherlands
Velma stared out the window of the villa, down the driveway, into endless vistas of flat, flat, flat.
Her four resident sisters-in-law sat in a semi-circle behind her, chattering.
Laurent was away on business again, which meant that he would be eating things that were bad for him.
The baby was starting to become more real. The kind of real that required her to visit the necessary what seemed like every fifteen minutes.
The thought that if Laurent popped an artery one of these days, there was no guarantee at all that his family would provide support for the baby was becoming more real, too.
Much less that they would continue to provide support for her.
Aeltje was sympathetic, though. Aeltje understood about horoscopes.
Aeltje had also married into the faculty at the University of Leiden. And Aeltje's sons were studying science.
Everybody at Laurent's party had loved the lava lamps.
The high-ups in Dutch society might actually pay to have lava lamps of their own.
With hers as a model, the letter that she'd gotten from Pam to help them, and the ability of Aeltje's sons to do things in laboratories, and someone to do the work, could she start manufacturing lava lamps?
A girl had to take care of herself, after all.
Frankfurt am Main
Isaac de Ron concluded that Locquifier and Ouvrard were gone. Which meant that all of Ducos' Huguenot fanatics were gone. Out of the inn Zum Weissen Schwan, definitely. Out of Frankfurt, probably. Out of the USE? Perhaps.
First he called upon Soubise. Who called in Sandrart.
Then, since Laurent Mauger was in town, they called in Mauger.
He was thoroughly shocked to discover who his real employer had been. Pleased also, of course. Mauger was a man who respected status and nobody in the Huguenot diaspora had more status than Duke Henri de Rohan.
He didn't know much to tell them, however, beyond the instructions he had conveyed to Dumais in Grantville, which Soubise already knew about in any case.
Mauger agreed to continue to channel communications to Ducos in Scotland. If any more should arrive in Haarlem, he stipulated. All of the ones he transmitted had come from or been addressed to Locquifier, after all.
And he did not know where Michel Ducos was. The sailor who carried the letters back and forth from Haarlem just picked them up and left them at a drop point.
That provided Soubise with the name of a tavern in a Scottish port. Nothing more.
Grantville
Matthias Bruller, a guest at the Willard Hotel, presented himself as a pleasant and unobtrusive man. He was mildly disappointed that the room to which the desk clerk assigned him did not provide a view of the bridges, but it wasn't worth complaining about. He made only a couple of casual remarks about being a tourist-a man involved in the mutton trade from Strassburg to Silesia. Not that he ever had been, but he had learned enough from Ouvrard during the years of their association that he could fake it, easily enough. In times of peace, when the economy was going about its business, the city of Strassburg, population about twenty thousand, approximately the size of Grantville now, figured on consuming about four thousand oxen per year. Grantville, given its up-time citizens' fondness for beef, slaughtered many more. By contrast, Strassburg slaughtered and consumed about a thousand sheep per day. Grantville, although the down-timers ate mutton, of course, slaughtered less than half that many. It was not a place of intense interest to sheep merchants.